Private military contractor Erik Prince has launched a new company to provide the military and private sectors with customized defense against drones.
The company, Vectus Air Defense Systems, was announced on Aug. 21 in partnership with Swarmer, a Ukrainian-founded drone autonomy software company that Prince also backs and where he serves as non-executive chairman.
Vectus plans to offer customers a tailored package of equipment, personnel, operations, management, and maintenance, with the goal of protecting critical infrastructure from drone attacks.
Much of the world’s critical infrastructure was built before cheap kamikaze drones became a widespread security threat.
Defending those facilities with expensive interceptors can create an economic and logistical imbalance in favor of attackers, particularly when inexpensive drones are deployed in swarms.
Vectus said it aims to drive down the cost of countering those threats by combining different defensive technologies.
“It’s clear that the threat is evolving rapidly and the demand for a private sector solution is very strong,” Prince, a former Navy SEAL, said in announcing the venture.
Prince said he spent considerable time over the past year in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America speaking with technology suppliers and potential customers.
“We need to achieve a drastic reduction in the cost of defense and to enable customers to take the protection of critical assets into their own hands,” he said. “This is not just a business opportunity but a societal requirement.”
Swarmer, headquartered in Austin, Texas, develops software that allows a single operator to coordinate hundreds of autonomous drones and other unmanned systems in real time.
The company says its technology has supported more than 100,000 combat missions in Ukraine since it was first deployed there in April 2024.
Under its partnership with Vectus, Swarmer will help develop advanced counter-unmanned aircraft capabilities, including technology that allows groups of interceptor drones to operate collaboratively against incoming threats.
Vectus plans to combine technologies from U.S., Ukrainian, Israeli, and other allied suppliers into customized layered defense networks.
Those systems could include detection and tracking equipment, radar and other sensors, electronic warfare systems, interceptor drones, and rapid-firing large-caliber cannons.
The company said deployed systems would be upgraded as threats and defensive technologies evolve.
Prince Expands Private Security Business
The air-defense venture marks the latest expansion of Prince’s footprint in private military and security services.
In 2025, Prince launched Vectus Global, his broader security and logistics business. It has been operating in Haiti, assisting the Haitian government’s campaign against armed gangs.
Prince founded Blackwater in 1997 after serving as a Navy SEAL. The company grew into one of the best-known private security contractors used by the U.S. government during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before Prince sold it in 2010.
Blackwater came under intense scrutiny following a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisur Square.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Blackwater guards opened fire in the square, killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding numerous others.
Four former Blackwater contractors were later convicted on charges stemming from the shooting.
President Donald Trump granted full pardons to the four men in December 2020, near the end of his first term.
